Ghosts
by oftimeandspace
Summary: Our lovers linger inside us like ghosts, haunting the corridors and deserted rooms. Invisible, but always there, waiting."


Rose thinks there is a lot of comfort in routine, the feel of waking with sheets twisted about her legs, the sudden calm of a London morning when she finally manages to slam the alarm button to off mid-shriek. She rises, crosses the bedroom floor on pale feet, singing songs of loneliness to the red flowers blooming in neat boxes on her windowsill. Sunlight filters in through the gauze curtains, neatly intersected lines of light and dark like city blocks laid out on the floor. From downstairs come muffled shouts and bangs as Jackie tries to find the tea tin, and starts yelling after she discovers Tony has hidden it again.

Rose flicks open the curtains with a twitch of a hand, pressing her face to the glass, breath frosting into circles that melt with every inhaled breathe she takes. Across the street a young girl in a red coat swings from her father's hand, almost hidden by the flapping of his long coat in the wintry wind.

Somewhere Martha Jones smiles up at the Doctor, the easy sunny smile of a girl sighing around the hope of a new crush, but Rose does not know this. She knows the timetables for outbound international zeppelin flights for the upcoming week (for work, of course) and the upcoming sales at all the major department stores (she rather fancies the idea of a proper leather jacket of her own). She reckons she knows what her Mum cried about during nights long ago on the estate, the knowledge that after awhile the loss becomes normal, the memory of the ghost of a forgotten voice, a half remembered face.

(The Doctor knows the precise number of seconds since they parted, backwards and upside down, spooling out into infinity before his outstretched fingers, and his mouth works around the numbers sometimes while he flits around the main console. Martha asks a few times and finally gives up, chalking it up to some complicated Gallifreyan math problem.)

She tilts her head up, watching the passing of a domestic flight zeppelin, smoke like ink flowing out behind to trace cursive across the blue sky. Memories bob to the surface, like mermaids breaking like waves the calm of a dark sea, wild and unbidden. The pain of falling against the grating on a bad landing, bruising an already bruised hip (somewhere the Doctor whoops and turns to grin at Martha, throws the TARDIS through the Vortex). The sting of salt against her chapped lips, the taste of chips hot and fresh from a street vendor, and the Doctor reaching out to brush a crumb from the corner of her mouth with a callused thumb.

She turns and heads to the bathroom, traces the the lines of her cheekbones under the hot spray of water--she is so much skinnier now, all hard and new and she feels so impossibly old-- and flings her soaking hair out of her eyes. Beads of water slide down her back, ghosts of sensory memory sliding down the grooves of her spine.

(Somewhere the Doctor places a hand to Martha's back and shoves her forward, towards a new adventure.)

As she passes the fogged mirror she pauses and scrawls a lopsided HELLO! on its surface, the lines showing her a slice of an eye staring back at her, a light freckle on the bridge of her nose. She grins, and steps into her bedroom humming, dressing quickly.

Downstairs her mum yells something about breakfast. In the hallway Tony nearly barrels into her, clutching his new action figure and half dressed for the day. He tells her all about his plans for the day while she steers him back to his room and pulls his pajama top over his head (white striped button up-- she remembers oranges, and how she hates the sickly thick taste of orange juice). Her hand engulfs his, strong and capable, as they descend the stairs and enter the kitchen. Jackie swings Tony up for a smack of a kiss, settles him on her hip, and rolls her eyes halfheartedly when Rose takes a muffin, mumbles something about work around a bite, and grabs her purse and keys. Pete throws her a hello over the top of his newspaper, focused on the business section, exactly the kind of not-quite-there father all the other kids had growing up ages ago.

The door closes with a soft click behind her; she blinks in the sunlight, motionless on the stoop of their townhouse. She looks up again at the sky, where the streak of ozone from the earlier zeppelin is slowly fading.

She grins to herself, a hidden smile of teeth and tongue and loss. Sometimes she can almost catch the reflection of the Doctor out of the corner of her eye if she's quick enough, can almost hear his voice rising in the din of a crowded subway car. She begins singing an old song under her breath, and shakes her hair out of her eyes.

(The Doctor tells Martha about the scientific impossibility of ghosts, tilting his head up to stare at the glowing network of city lights that make up London's night skies.)

They go on in their own ways, unknowing, unseen, ricocheting down separate but entwined paths like pinballs in a shaken machine. Rose sings down the days, and the Doctor runs, clutching another girl's hand, into an unknown future.

They wait for the ghosts of their lovers to disappear down darkened corridors into the recesses of memory, or for them to solidify again into being before their eyes. They wait, and they believe, and they love.

Somewhere in a universe filled with people and lights and zeppelins, a girl sings songs to red flowers in the mornings, and a man tilts his head and glances out of the room, and jerks when his companion asks him if he hears anything.

"No," he says, and chides her with a grin that ghosts don't exist, remember. Not here. Especially not here.

Sometimes he wonders who he is lying to.


End file.
